I agree that Senator Masterson would gain a lot of insight on the difficulties guards experience if he participated as an observer. I know someone who quit Lansing in May to take a lower paying job with promise of future pay raises because he felt unsafe and stressed by the daily working conditions. And as it turns out he was right. The June 10 incident was very scary for all involved.

It may be that you are not considering the entire scope of the job. It would be rare for an officer to "drive 10 -12 hours a day." Their job also includes, for example, cleaning out the back seat when the drunken driver just arrested vomits and/or urinates or worse in the backseat of the patrol car. It also includes wading through waist high brush for hours at a time looking for suspects or missing persons/children. It also includes investigating unattended deaths that occurred days or weeks ago. It includes investigating possible murders and exposure to body fluids that most of us cannot imagine. It includes being a first responder to people very sick with illnesses that can be carried home to their families including pregnant wives and young children. I do not consider showers for our officers a "perk." As for the gym, how many times have readers responded with "why didn't the officers use other means" to stories about use of a taser or lethal force? If you are sending your wife, daughter, husband or son out to arrest a strong college kid hyped up on meth, do you want the officer(s) in shape? Officers who are not physically fit cannot perform a very physically demanding job at a level that is acceptable to the public. Fitness is a job requirement for our officers to keep both themselves and the public safe, not a lifestyle choice.

I think most are missing the obvious. Free speech is protected by law no matter what we think of what he said. Our personal opinions about the content of the tweet matter not at all. On the other hand, I am tired of social media in general. As I tell little ones in my classroom all the time, just because you think it doesn't mean you should say it out loud. As a society, we have abandoned the filter that allows discourse in favor of 10 minutes of "fame." If Guth had expressed his sentiments without resorting to wishing death upon children, the focus would be on the sentiment, not the ramification for the University. Or this would be a non-story and Guth would have missed his 10 minutes. Which brings me back to my original point, just because you are thinking it doesn't mean that we all want to hear it, even if you have the right to say it.

The January 16 Time magazine was on gun use and control. Very interesting statistics showing that even police officers with all of their training in stressful situations and with hours and hours on firing ranges are not as good or reliable shots when being fired at. It examines the body's reaction to extreme stress and the difficulty of making the right choices with cortisol raging through your system. The article goes on to point out that keeping teachers certified and even up to the training level of a police officer would be extremely difficult. An armed teacher is only as good as the training they receive and there is not enough out there to keep them ready. Also, do you want the police when they arrive to begin trying to assess who the bad guy is? How many guns will there be and how do we know who is who in the heat of the moment? A recipe fro tragedy. Can you imagine the outcry on this website or nationwide if a teacher with a gun was accidently shot by a responding officer?

Noncontroversial? The funding is "not secured." Where are they going to come up with a new 1.1 million? Are you planning to donate? At this point, I can't believe anyone is planning for new spending. We can't afford the current budget.